Polarization in Congress: Cable TV news might not be the culprit

Bill O’Reilly, host of “The O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel, points across the table at his nemesis, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, during an appearance in 2010. (AP/Fox News Channel)

Democrats and Republicans alike get most of their news from centrist news outlets — and will often change the channel to watch a news program that challenges their ideology, according to one new study.

The paper by political scientist Michael LaCour flies in the face of the conventional view that ideological cable television networks such as Fox News Channel and MSNBC are creating “echo chambers,” allowing Americans to avoid hearing news or opinions that contradict their own world view.

That “selective exposure” theory is popular in part because it might explain polarization in Congress. Another study, for example, showed that members of Congress from districts where Fox News first rolled out in 1996 became more critical of President Clinton than members representing districts without Fox News. (However, Fox News seemed to have no measurable effect on elections at that time.)

But LaCour, a doctoral candidate at UCLA, says those “echo chambers” are largely empty. Only 1% of Democrats and 4% of Republicans get at least 90% of their news from ideologically like-minded sources, according to his analysis of media exposure patterns.

“For most people, they’re avoiding the cable news programs altogether,” he says. “Of those who are going, they’re watching a lot of both.”

News junkies of both parties were most likely to get their news from a variety of sources. “In reality, what’s the best predictor of how much conservative news you watch? It’s how much liberal news you watch. And vice versa,” LaCour says.

He compares political news to watching sports: A football fan will watch Monday Night Football no matter what teams are playing. “It could be that two teams you hate are playing, but you’d rather watch a football game than nothing at all.”

LaCour’s methodology is as interesting as his findings. Nielsen ratings don’t provide any data on party affiliation, and self-reported surveys of media consumption can be unreliable. So LaCour turned to data from a 2006 experiment where researchers gave participants a cellphone with a Shazam-like smartphone app that tracked their media exposure.

Second, LaCour analyzed the content of television and radio news and talk shows to determine where they fall on the ideological spectrum. He did this by mining the Congressional Record to discover the phrases used most often by Republicans (“death tax” and “illegal aliens,” for example) and Democrats (“middle class,” “minimum wage”) and looking for those same phrases in news programs. The results are what you might expect, with On the Record w/Greta Van Susteren rated the most conservative show and Real Time with Bill Maher the most liberal:

Political scientist Michael LaCour plotted the ideological scores of major television and radio news and talk programs against a graph showing polarization of members of Congress. Shows at the top are most conservative; those at the bottom are most liberal. (Graphic by Michael LaCour)